>ooooooooo! get on the bus to texas, joanna, but make a detour to
>new york. i'll meet up with you this june and take you wild berry
>picking on Owego Hill!! wild blackberries, blackcaps and
>raspberries too. yum.
***** The Calculation of Pleasure
The motive behind all Fourierist construction (all combination) is not justice, equality, liberty, etc., it is pleasure. Fourierist pleasure (_positive happiness_) is very easy to define: it is sensual pleasure: "amorous freedom, good food, insouciance, and the other delights that the Civilized do not even dream of coveting because philosophy has taught them to treat the desire for true pleasures as vice."[4] Fourierist sensuality is, above all, oral. Of course, the two major sources of pleasure are equally Love and Food, always in tandem; however, although Fourier pushes the claims of erotic freedom, he does not describe it sensually; whereas food is lovingly fantasized in detail (compotes, _mirlitons_, melons, pears, lemonades); and Fourier's speech itself is sensual, it progresses in effusiveness, enthusiasm, throngs of words, verbal gourmandise (neologism is an erotic act, which is why he never fails to arouse the censure of pedants)....
[4] Let us briefly recall that in the Fourierist lexicon, _Civilization_ has a precise (numbered) meaning: the word designates the 5th period of the 1st phase (Infancy of Mankind), which comes between the period of the feudal patriarchate (the birth of large agriculture and manufacturing industry) and that of guaranteeism or demi-association (industry by association). Whence a broader meaning: in Fourier, _Civilization_ is synonymous with wretched barbarism and designates the state of his own day (and ours); it contrasts with universal Harmony (2nd and 3rd phases of mankind). Fourier believed himself to be at the axis of Barbaric Civilization and Harmony.
(Roland Barthes, _Sade/Fourier/Loyola_, trans. Richard Miller, Berkeley: U of California P, 1976, p. 81) *****
Yoshie